The Wave Garden (East Bay, CA)

Towards Pt. Richmond, a neighborhood of houses with bay views, but also close to the nearby refineries, harbored a spectacular garden. 

entrance gate

 The Wave Garden was developed as a private garden, but is open as public space to visitors -- the best sort of shared space.

Strongly envisioned hardscape is softened by drifts of vegetation, with dramatic contrasts in textures and colors.

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Ferns, Yucca, Beautyberry, Snow Squarestem, and a Recipe

Ferns create a soft edge between the woods and the lawn.

Ferns

I've always loved ferns in the landscape. It's just so relaxing not to have to worry about whether there will be nice flowers and that their color coordinates with others. With ferns, there are never any flowers, so I can just enjoy their fernyness in the landscape.

Read my post "Ferns in the Landscape" over on the Native Plants & Wildlife Gardens blog to see some of my ferns and to learn about their two-stage life cycle.

Tuberous swordfern (Nephrolepis cordifolia) is tremendously invasive in Florida.  I've removed bushels of them from our property, but many more bushels to go.

Beautyberry (Callicarpa americana) is blooming now: unbelievably purple berries to follow. This native shrub is in the mint family and is a favorite of birds in the winter. People make jellies and jams from the berries, but I'd rather feed the birds.

Yucca (Yucca aloifolia) bloom in the morning sunlight. This plant is part of our mailbox garden and the spike with the bloom is ten feet tall!  There are a lot of these yuccas in the neighborhood, but they bloomed a month ago including one that is a clone of this plant. Weird.

Mediterranean pasta salad. The recipe is flexible and is a great way to use up whatever you have on hand. This rendition included these items from the garden: the last of my cabbage, tomatoes, green onions, sweet onions, cucumber, garlic chives, chives, Greek oregano and curly parsley. The pesto dressing included sweet onions, garlic chives, garlic, Greek oregano, curly parsley, and dollarweed. The recipe is on page 171 of "Organic Methods for Vegetable Gardening in Florida."

The first snow squarestem (Melanthera nivea) flowers of the season appeared last week. The beautiful pollinator parade has begun! Here's my post on this very-easy-to-grow pollinator plant: Snow Squarestem: a Bee & Butterfly Magnet.

Dawn's early light on July 5th from my front yard. Many of the neighbors went crazy with their personal fireworks the previous evening, even though it was pouring rain.

Enjoy the summer in your yard, but garden early in the day to avoid heat stroke!


Green Gardening Matters,
Ginny Stibolt

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Succulents and containers

It makes sense that succulents, agave, and cacti are popular in SF/East Bay gardens (and throughout Mediterranean climate zones, too!)  They sail through the dry summer months looking great, and most overwinter, too, in the mild temperatures along the coast.  (In contrast, my sedum bed in the mountains of NC is looking downright wan after months of unusually cool and wet weather).

The star of dry-land gardens was Ruth Bancroft Garden, with its amazing assortment of species agaves, yuccas, etc. More about that garden later.

But here are a couple of charming container plantings (most including succulents), selected in a first photo pass.  It's always fun to note combinations that are unusual (and impractical) for an Eastern gardener.

entrance kiosk at SF Botanical Garden

container in Oakland artist's garden (Ann Nichol)

pocket planting demonstration at Sunset Magazine gardens

Filoli nursery assortment of succulents

Bicycle plantings

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A SF sculpture garden

Succulents were a primary theme of Bay Area gardens

An entry planting

A second urban garden was right under the I-280 freeway, tucked below a steep rocky cliff in a still industrial area. It reminded me of a very dicey field site that I had in Hunter's Point (nearby) from decades ago!

But magic had been worked here, from the transformation of the house to the garden as space for the artist/owner's rotating sculpture gallery.

The light was extremely bright -- not good for photographs, but here's a look.

A view back towards the house

A hillside view

View from the house

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A secret SF garden (Organic Mechanic)

Our first fling garden had a compelling entry --wow is what I thought.  Pulling up in front of a concrete-surrounded apartment building, walking down a long apartment hallway,

and then pow!

Amazing.  The gardeners here (Organic Mechanic) have been working on this area (transformed from back of the apartment concrete to green space) for 15+ years.

It was a testament to the power of green space!

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Rain, rain, and more rain

Here in Western North Carolina, it just keeps raining. 

We're already above the average for the year (and we're only halfway through!) It's raining heavily now (again) and we're well over 3 inches today already.

rain from deck

Here's a view out the back from the deck into the ravine forest from earlier today.  Monsoon time!

P.S. Garden Bloggers Fling photos are downloaded -- now it's time to sort them out!

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Returning to a veritable tropical forest

After a long week away, visiting gardens during the Garden Bloggers Fling, and being on vacation in San Francisco, my overwhelming thought coming home to the mountains, was WOW!  It's been raining a lot.

My vegetable beds are verdant -- geez, I harvested (and we ate) chard and leeks just before leaving, and I had more stout leeks to harvest for this evening's dinner.  We would have had chard but it was raining too hard to harvest...

Lots of wonderful garden pictures from the Fling to come -- I didn't have time to download them while traveling -- the pace was busy (if not grueling) and in the evenings, my gardening companion and I were out enjoying the City.  Lovely.

We spent our last day in Marin County, visiting Pt. Reyes National Seashore (where I had study sites MANY years ago) and driving the coastal highway.

An unexpected pleasure was visiting the Seed Bank in Petaluma.

Seed Bank in Petaluma

It's a great place that's part of Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. They were forward-thinking enough to save both the seed providing and the structure! Kudos for that.

I didn't have my camera along, but check out some of these images.  Fabulous.  I have more seeds now.  What's not to like about that?

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